


Futile Devices

by greeneyes_softsighs



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Angst, Explicit Language, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 04:05:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3194696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeneyes_softsighs/pseuds/greeneyes_softsighs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trowa returns to talk to Heero, not knowing all he needed was the proper good-bye. 1+3</p><p>An angsty submission to 1x3x1 week on tumblr this year.<br/>Theme: Bittersweet/Bittersweet Goodbyes</p>
            </blockquote>





	Futile Devices

**Author's Note:**

> Submitted to [1x3x1 week](http://1x3x1week.tumblr.com/) 2015.
> 
> The title is taken from the song of the same name, by [Sufjan Stevens.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MpKP9b_NJQ)

Trowa woke with a dry mouth and a sore face, awkwardly sprawled on the couch in Heero’s apartment living room.  Yellow sunlight streamed in through partially closed blinds, and outside the window Trowa heard the muffled rumble of trucks entering the freeway from an overpass.  He squinted into the light past his hand, shielding his sensitive eyes while they adjusted, and sat up slowly.  

A glass of water was sitting on the coffee table beside him.  Trowa sipped it after giving a tentative sniff, careful of the newly scabbed over cut on his bottom lip.  It was cool and tasted crisp on his sleep-heavy tongue.  He wondered when it had been left for him.  Another rumble from the freeway cut through the silence of the apartment.  Aside from the gentle hum of the refrigerator, Trowa could hear nothing else.  No other movement meant Heero must be out, which made sense, since it was late Wednesday morning.  He would be at work at the Preventers’ headquarters in the city.

A quick look around the room, and over into the kitchen past the small breakfast bar, revealed that Heero’s apartment had changed little in the years since Trowa had moved out.  There were more things on the walls.  A framed picture of Heero with Relena on her wedding day.  Another photo of Heero with Duo and Quatre at a sporting event, which Trowa remembered taking for them almost three years ago.  A framed medal and certificate from Heero’s current job as a Preventer.  These things were curiously prominent.  They stood out on the stark white of the walls like the dog-eared pages of a book.

Trowa leaned back against the couch as he cradled the half-empty glass in his hand, resting the bottom on his thigh while twirling it absently.  It had been years since he’d sat in this room.  Years since he’d seen Heero in person.  Though they had been in touch, with his schedule of performances at the circus and Heero’s heavy workload as a Preventer the ex-pilots found it hard to set aside time for a reunion.  So, when he finally found a chance, Trowa decided in a fit of nostalgia that it would be a good idea to surprise Heero at home.

Heero had not been home.  Trowa had waited an hour past the Preventer’s usual quitting time before he headed down to the bar below the apartments, planning to wait a little while longer with a drink in his hand.  The bar was dark.  It reeked, and retina burning pink neon light bounced off the walls near the entrance while sickening blue flickered by the bathrooms.  It was familiar, though not a place full of fond memories.  That’s where he found Heero.  He sat at the bar hunched over, peeling apart a napkin and rolling it into tiny balls while nursing a beer.  Trowa sat beside him and ordered a whiskey.

“Whiskey, no ice,” he had said, never a fan of idiotic bar jargon.  Heero hadn’t turned to look at him.  He hadn’t said a damn thing until the bartender slid a squat glass of whiskey across to Trowa and quoted a price.  Heero laid down the rumpled bills before he could reach for his wallet, then picked up both of their drinks and nodded at a booth toward the back.  They sat, bathed in fluorescent blue, and drank in silence for a while.  When Heero was done with his beer, and Trowa with his whiskey, Heero spoke.

“Another?”  His voice grated out just above the noise cranking out of the old jukebox to their left.

“A beer,” Trowa had replied.  When Heero returned with a dark beer for Trowa and another light beer for himself, the green-eyed man pushed a thin roll of credits into his palm.  Heero pushed it back.

“No, keep your money,” he said.  “The night’s on me.”  He knew Trowa wouldn’t push.

“Thanks,” he had said softly, pocketing the credits as they continued to drink.  Trowa wondered how long Heero had been in the bar before he arrived.  He watched the other man.  Noticed how he drew his lips up over his teeth after every few sips of beer, or how his dark blue eyes would regard Trowa in the same way his studied Heero.  

They were just shy of 25 now, 10 years after the war they had both barely survived.  Trowa still woke up some nights with the bloody ghosts of their battles haunting his dreams.  He always had, even with Heero there he woke up screaming, paralyzed and helpless.  Unable to help himself or the others.  

He could live with them, now.  Could ignore the dreams if he was having a good day.  Being with Catherine and the troupe had helped.  Quitting the Preventers had helped.  He had convinced himself that leaving Heero had helped.  Trowa wondered if it had the same effect on Heero.  In their correspondence, he mentioned little of his personal troubles and only detailed stories about other people or the ex-pilots he worked alongside at the office.  Trowa wrote about Catherine, the circus, and the state of the colonies they traveled through.  Sometimes, on his bad days, he would begin a letter revealing everything.  What he’d thought, how he had felt, and how much he regretted leaving to travel with the circus again.  Those letters were never posted.  Trowa would write them, read them over, and immediately hit the delete key.  

“Ready?”  Heero had asked.  They abandoned the glasses at the table and walked up the stairs to his apartment.  Trowa was glad to be away from the sickening blue and pink glow of the bar.  He could see Heero more clearly in the warm light of the hallway.  He was all compact muscle and sinew under the dark shirt of his uniform, with strong arms and a sharp jawline grey with stubble.  All of his angles were familiar, yet foreign, after such a long time of absence.

As soon as they entered the small foyer of his apartment, Heero spun and pinned Trowa to the door with an arm across his chest and a fierce, hard kiss against his mouth.  He tasted bitter and hoppy, like the beer, with an underlying sweetness Trowa remembered but could never place.  He parted his lips for Heero’s tongue as it thrust into his mouth, searching over teeth until Trowa offered his own.  The slick muscles slid together, tasting, remembering.  Heero moaned into his mouth, then pulled away to look into Trowa’s eyes.  Deep blue met green for a moment before Heero whispered, “Welcome home.”

Trowa inhaled sharply and shoved Heero away.  The ex-Wing pilot stumbled back into the kitchen with a look of surprise.  They watched each other, breathing heavily, until Trowa finally spoke up.

“I can’t,” he said, and regretted the words as soon as they entered the air between them.  As soon he had tasted the memory of Heero’s mouth on his.  That look, the one that crossed Heero’s face the first time Trowa left, surfaced again.  It meant that Heero had hoped.  Had wanted.  But Trowa wouldn’t -- couldn’t -- give him wanted, he was sure of that.  He took a steadying breath as Heero turned away and strode into the kitchen.  He pulled out a bottle of water from the fridge.   “I just came to visit.  I thought it would be nice to see you.  To catch up.”

“Just came to visit?”  Heero asked, his voice rasping slightly as he slammed the fridge door closed.  “To catch up?  What is there to catch up on?  I send you emails twice a month, sometimes more.  There isn’t much else for me to talk about.”

“I wanted to talk about other things.  The things we don’t mention in our letters.  I need to know--”

“Need to know what?”  Heero had asked suspiciously.

“Need to know if--” Trowa paused, his throat closing over the words he wanted to say.  He stared at Heero, trying desperately to keep his mask of composure in place to hide the turbulent swirl of emotion in his head.  If he said anything more, he knew it would sweep him away.  He would lose himself in his heart.

“Need to know what, Trowa?  Spit it out,” Heero growled angrily, stalking forward until he stood at the threshold to the foyer.  He gripped the wood archway in one hand, as if holding himself back from Trowa, keeping the space between them because without that space he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions.

“Are you happier?  Are you happy now?”  Trowa’s voice escaped his throat in a breath, surprisingly calm.  Heero’s face contorted in anger and then he rushed forward.  He had Trowa’s t-shirt bunched into his fists and he was shaking the taller man.  The water bottle skittered across the floor and bumped into the wall.  The door trembled on its hinges as Trowa’s shoulders slammed into it roughly.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”  Heero shouted, hoarse and desperate, pushing Trowa out of the foyer into the living room.  Lost footing at the edge of the carpet had Trowa falling hard on his hip, and Heero followed him.  He straddled the taller man’s waist and yanked a fist back to his ear.  The first frenzied blow glanced off Trowa’s cheek, the second split his bottom lip.  Trowa let the man land a couple more, tasting blood before twisting out of the hold and stumbling away.  He leaned against the wall and touched his lip.  Bright blood dripped from his fingertips.

“What gives you the right to do this to me?  You’re the one who left!  You’re the one who keeps writing to me about the fucking circus.  About how you and Catherine are getting along just great,” Heero gasped, catching his breath.  He leaned against the couch with his fingers tangled in his hair, pushing the dark mass back from his face.  Trowa saw the anger, confusion and hurt trapped in his dark eyes.  Guilt welled up in his chest, squeezing his organs painfully, but his face hardly twitched.

“You never said.  I thought -- you had said I should go,” Trowa offered the silence.  Heero grimaced and turned to kick the couch, leaning forward to grip the arm as he forced his body to calm itself after the rush of adrenaline.  His shoulders and back tensed under his shirt, remaining that way until he let out a soft breath.

“Yeah.  I did say that,” Heero murmured, looking over his couch out the window into the night.  Even at this hour, the overpass rattled and hummed with traffic.  He finally turned back to look at Trowa, swallowing before giving the other a wry grin that seemed so out of place on his normally stolid face.  “But you said you needed it, Trowa.  To be away from the preventers and Earth and the others.  I assumed you also meant you needed to be away from me.  Not that you said it in as many words, but you never really say exactly what you mean.”

Trowa’s mind had blanked.  He tried to recall the initial conversation they had, but three years was a long time to remember something.  He had thought that leaving was the right thing to do.  They needed to be separated to remember who they were, so Trowa could let Heero do what he needed without interfering with his own personal demons.  Heero never said he wanted Trowa to stay.  Never asked him to come back, even with their numerous correspondence.

“Could I have changed your mind?”  Heero had asked, encroaching on Trowa’s space again, approaching him and looking at him straight in the eye.  Trowa straightened up and leaned against the wall as the smaller man grabbed his face.  The broad, rough pad of Heero’s thumb ran over his lips, stretching the broken skin painfully, tearing.  His blunt fingertips dug into the side of the green-eyed man’s skull.  Trowa blinked back heat starting to pool at the corners of his eyes.  He sucked in a breath and clenched his teeth.  

“You wouldn’t have come back, even if I asked,” Heero growled at him.  His hand slid from Trowa’s cheek to the nape of his neck, smearing a trail of blood and saliva from his lip across his jaw and under his ear.  Heero yanked his head down, pressing their foreheads together with steady pressure against Trowa’s neck.  

“No,” Trowa croaked out his denial, eyelids fluttering to blink back the heat of his tears.  The emotion was short lived, but Heero noticed the crack in his façade.  His anger dissipated into surprise.  Trowa swiped his tongue over his lip, tasting blood and irritating the broken skin, to test how painful it was.  Heero misinterpreted the gesture and leaned forward, clasping his fingers at the base of Trowa’s skull as he kissed him with one brief, brutal press of his lips and teeth before burying his face in the crook of Trowa’s shoulder.

The sharp pangs from his face, and even the dull throb of his bruised hip from the fall, was more bearable than the painful tightness inside his chest.  He wasn’t sure what it was.  Regret, guilt, or loneliness, maybe -- since those were the three most prevalent emotions he felt when Heero was involved.  Of course, there was also love, but love was the root of all these other emotions.  In fact, he was pretty sure that loving Heero had only ever resulted in pain of some sort.  Granted, there were times when the pain was necessary and even, oddly enough, pleasurable.

Trowa held onto Heero tightly, and the shorter man held onto him, until their breathing was even.  When Heero took a deep breath, Trowa felt his chest expand, and on the exhale the ex-pilot pulled away and took a few steps back.  He pocketed his hands and regarded Trowa with the same even stare from the bar, having ‘returned to zero’ as he sometimes put it.  Trowa took a deep breath, too, slowly letting it out on a ten-count.  The pain in his chest had subsided, leaving only the emptiness of catharsis.  It was freeing to be able to feel nothing after such a huge explosion of emotion, but just as he did when he lived with Heero, Trowa questioned the healthiness of it.

“How long are you visiting?”  Heero asked.

“I’d thought just one night,” Trowa murmured past his split lip.  He glanced at the smear of blood on Heero’s chin.  From the kiss.

“Not much of a visit.  The others probably want to say ‘hi’ at least.”

“I don’t really want to see them,” Trowa replied with a shrug, tasting his broken lip again.  It was starting to swell up from all the abuse.  “I just came to see you.”

“Hm… well, you can sleep here,” Heero offered.

“The couch will be fine,” Trowa agreed quickly, catching the look of confused disappointment as it passed over Heero’s face.  They both knew that was out of the question, but Heero had still hoped, and the knowledge of that brought a new pain to life in Trowa’s heart.  He walked over to the couch and sat.

“You want a pillow or something?”

“No, this is fine,” Trowa shook his head as he stroked the arm of the couch.  “Thanks.”

“Trowa, will you do me a favor?  Be here when I get back from work tomorrow, please?”  Heero had asked, before going off to bed himself.  Trowa had considered the shorter man’s hunched shoulders, his pocketed hands, and that ever present intensity in his blue eyes.  He hadn’t given an answer, and Heero had just left to his room without pushing it.

Now it was morning, all of the heat and turmoil of emotion from the night before was a distant memory.  Trowa stood with his empty glass and left it on the breakfast bar before walking down the short hallway to Heero’s room.  Just the few steps it took to get to there brought back memories.  A night after a ball game, pressed against the wall, and Heero had said ‘You never come to these things.  Thank you… I love you...’  Fleeting memories.

The door was closed, and no doubt Heero would have something in place to recognize if someone tampered with it, but Trowa didn’t hesitate to open it and enter.  The room was dark and tidy, set up in the exact same way Trowa remembered, even with Heero’s slippers tucked under the bed on the side next to the window.  More memories surfaced.  A lot of fights had ended here, in a flurry of sucking mouths and grasping hands, eager to ride the high of adrenaline until there was nothingness again.  Trowa found himself by Heero’s desk, where it was shoved catty corner to the bed, and opened some of the drawers.

There wasn’t anything in particular he was looking for, or any suspicions he needed to squash, just curiosity.  Heero was meticulously organized.  Each drawer had a specific purpose, and some were rigged with dividers in the case of more than one purpose.  On the top of the last drawer, though, simply thrown onto the files Heero kept for work, was a small leather bound notebook with gilded edges.  Trowa picked it up and recognized that, at this size and shape, it must function as a journal.  That’s where he came to an impasse.

Entering Heero’s room, looking through his drawers, those things were necessary for Trowa -- and no doubt expected of him as an ex-Gundam pilot.  Trowa ran his thumb over the cover of the journal and flipped it over, making note of scratches in the leather binding and the soft scuff marks usual to wear and tear.  He quickly flipped through the creamy pages, then squeezed the covers closed again, without having read a word.  Heero’s cramped, impatient writing filled only about half of the book in blue ink.  Trowa scanned the desk and found, lined up parallel against the edge of Heero’s laptop, a fountain pen.

The fountain pen was a present.  A memory -- just like in the hallway, the bedroom -- fleeting and full of that same aching pain.  Trowa had left it behind, along with a few other keepsakes, and it seemed that Heero had kept it and used it.  Trowa sat on the bottom edge of the bed and opened the journal.  The first page was dated about two years ago, and that’s all he could bring himself to read for a while.  

Really, he had come here to talk about what he and Heero didn’t write in their letters, and in the journal he was sure he would find that.  Yet reading was simpler than asking.  Reading was simpler than sitting, and looking at him, and bearing the agony, the high, the catharsis -- all of that old, terrible cycle.  Trowa knew, somehow, it would be better to ask and talk and feel that pain.  Better in what way, he thought, glancing down at the words crowding the page.  Better because, by some stroke of luck, they may be able to repair what was broken?  Better than simply reading, simply getting the intel, and simply walking away?

A clean get away was always better than a complicated one.  Talking was a futile gesture between them, anyway, he decided.  Trowa slowly flipped through the journal, read it page by page, then closed the book.  He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.  They had been so broken, and were still young and stupid enough to think that anything could be, or even would be, fixed.  Should be?  Trowa squeezed his eyes shut.  

Heero’s journal contained thoughts similar to his own, words that he’d written over and over and failed to send.  They were validation.  They were apology.  They were too late, and Trowa was only just realizing this now, as he sat on his old lover’s bed in a bedroom they once shared.  He stood up after reading through the journal one more time, and tossed it onto the top of the files again, tapping the drawer closed with his foot.  The fountain pen clicked against the laptop, wiggling with the movement of the drawer.  Trowa picked it up and turned it over to read the inscription on the clip.

It was saccharine, something he knew Heero had gotten advice for, but it had been perfect at the time.  Trowa had loved it, and the stupid little gesture of the inscription.  He thought maybe he would take it with him, as the memories arose and he smiled, envisioning that velvety blue box again.  The way it felt to open it as Heero watched.  He had never gotten that feeling again, since then, and probably never would.  And the pen probably wouldn’t survive the depressurization of space travel.

Trowa pulled out the drawer again, and Heero’s journal.  He leaned over the desk and scribbled on the next unused page, just a short note.  A good-bye.  One that he needed to give, but certainly not one that Heero deserved.  He left the pen in the journal, and the journal on top of the desk.  He left the drawer open, the blinds drawn, the glass on the counter in the kitchen.  And then he left the apartment.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
